Gus's Top 100 Bootlickin' Nonce Anthems

IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
catalog said:
I missed the crash first time around, in this lisy I mean.

But I know 2008 had a much bigger impact in the states than here.

Like one of these cousins I'm seeing next week, I remember him telling me that his best friend from school's family lost everything, ended up in a trailer, father committed suicide. I never heard a story like that in the UK
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In Gus's vignette it was just a throwaway line but it referred to what could easily be a ruined life.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
suspended said:
My grandad is/was a big fiscal Republican type, he's an interesting case. Filing bankruptcy/government bailout was against his political/ethical beliefs, so he never did it—could've saved his house, saved millions. Plenty of his friends/peers in the industry did it. Instead he tried to keep the business afloat with personal savings, ended up wiping out everything. That, at least, is the story my (quite socially & economically progressive) mother tells, emphasizing grandad's integrity of belief over their deep political differences. (Which can be quite nasty—they went through periods of not talking during the Trump presidency). Whether, and how true that story is, I'm not sure
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That's crazy... I mean bankruptcy is a tenet of capitalism isn't it? Trump declares bankruptcy ever other day, does he admire Trump?
 
sus

sus

Moderator
IdleRich said:
In Gus's vignette it was just a throwaway line but it referred to what could easily be a ruined life.
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Indeed it was (a ruined life). My grandad made a lot of mistakes in his life. Prioritized work over everything—family, friends, home life—and then lost all the money, all the status. My mom moved about a dozen times in her childhood; he'd bounce around all over the country going after promotions, buying & selling homes, so she was constantly uprooted. He was never really able to retire. And he got in a bad accident about a decade back, hit by a car while biking. He's been in chronic pain since, pretty immobile. Anyway, some good lessons about putting all your eggs in one basket—and a particularly bad basket, at that. Probably about what he deserves; still, sad to see the old man in pain, looking back at his life feeling like he has nothing to show for it, that he's leaving it just as he started it, all that work for what?
 
sus

sus

Moderator
IdleRich said:
That's crazy... I mean bankruptcy is a tenet of capitalism isn't it? Trump declares bankruptcy ever other day, does he admire Trump?
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No. Voted for him but does not like the man. This goes for many Trump voters; "lesser of two evils" is a pretty common mentality on both sides of the political aisle here. E.g. a Biden/Harris ticket—loooool

Not really sure the philosophical parameters involved, can try to ask next time I see him
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
suspended said:
Well, the goal is to set the scene, give some small sense of what Beirut, as a band, might've meant to me. What the Takeaway Show video of Paris might've meant—what the concept of the Takeaway Show and "La Blogotheque" meant to me, as dispatches from the other side of the planet. I was new to the Internet and the Internet was new to me. Between keeping up my GPA and swimming all hours of the day, I barely had any time to explore the web anymore. The portal that had opened for me, in middle school with the Metanet forum and IRC channels, with Gloomp and Sidke and PALEMOON, didn't so much close as fade from neglect. In other words, I grew up—left exploration behind and got straight to exploiting, drilling, building muscle fibers, memorizing flash cards. I had to treasure the glimpses of a larger world, a world outside, whenever I got them. Beirut's story, as I understood it then, went like this: Zach Condon, age 20-something, spends a decade traveling across Europe, learning different regional folk music styles and hybridizing them with his own taste as guide.
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sus

sus

Moderator
I stand by there being worse things to believe in when you're 14. I was always a bad hippy too straightedge too intense too ambitious. But I think it's good and important to talk like a Romantic poet in your teenage years so long as you get to the other side of the dialectic later. All this Emersonian business about being true to yourself and making your own way in the world and how contorting yourself to win social games is aybe actually bad for your soul.
 
sus

sus

Moderator
I really liked this song I loved how they said French words and how it all sounded old-timey, like something out of an old French movie I liked that

 
sus

sus

Moderator
I played trumpet and baritone and French horn and random other brass instruments in the band from 3rd to 9th grade, when I gave them up to get more serious about swimming. So I have (had especially then) a soft spot for trumpet lines.
 
sus

sus

Moderator
I was still playing piano, that's the only instrument I could afford to keep in the rotation, so I remember playing around with this song on a little electric church organ that I found for $50 at an estate sale.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
suspended said:
Indeed it was (a ruined life). My grandad made a lot of mistakes in his life. Prioritized work over everything—family, friends, home life—and then lost all the money, all the status. My mom moved about a dozen times in her childhood; he'd bounce around all over the country going after promotions, buying & selling homes, so she was constantly uprooted. He was never really able to retire. And he got in a bad accident about a decade back, hit by a car while biking. He's been in chronic pain since, pretty immobile. Anyway, some good lessons about putting all your eggs in one basket—and a particularly bad basket, at that. Probably about what he deserves; still, sad to see the old man in pain, looking back at his life feeling like he has nothing to show for it, that he's leaving it just as he started it, all that work for what?
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Why do you say he deserves it? Do you mean morally as a punishment, or do you mean he deserves it cos ultimately he's a bad businessesman who put all his eggs in one basket?

To me his worst sin and error is the pride that kept him from declaring bankruptcy. Maybe he thought he could ride it out without doing that. Do you think if he could have his time again he would take that option? Or would he literally rather lose everything than use the rules designed to help people in that situation?

I find this really interesting, sorry to be nosy.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
jack_white.jpg
 
sus

sus

Moderator
IdleRich said:
Why do you say he deserves it? Do you mean morally as a punishment, or do you mean he deserves it cos ultimately he's a bad businessesman who put all his eggs in one basket?

To me his worst sin and error is the pride that kept him from declaring bankruptcy. Maybe he thought he could ride it out without doing that. Do you think if he could have his time again he would take that option? Or would he literally rather lose everything than use the rules designed to help people in that situation?

I find this really interesting, sorry to be nosy.
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It might be pride! I wouldn't assume it's pride. People make immense sacrifices for their beliefs sometimes, and I am hesitant to deflate all that by psychologizing it as, you know, fear or aversion or some underlying personal failures.

I say "deserves it" because I think orienting your life around money is a pretty widely recognized failure mode whose best-case scenario, even if you manage to keep your mountains of gold, is spiritual emptiness. In other words, if there's a pot handle everyone knows is hot and you touch it and get burned maybe you had it coming.
 
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